I’ve rarely been able to understand poetry–the mystery of the meaning of the words and their fragmentary arrangements. But I’ve learned in several classes since I retired, that I don’t have to understand every word. That sometimes reading for the feel, sounds, and rhythm is enough.

For someone like me who is left-brained, logical and organized, the idea of just going with the flow like that makes me want to impose order and make the words readable and understandable for all.

Then, six years ago, a friend recommended poems by Mary Oliver. She said her poems were accessible, which in my nurse-language meant understandable. We were attending the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and to my surprise, on the last day, she gifted me with a book of selected poems by Mary Oliver titled Devotions.

She knew I would need Oliver’s poems. I was going home to be with Marv until his death. When he and I thought he would die much earlier, we’d agreed I would go to this festival, a favorite of mine that I’d attended many summers. Marv didn’t want me around moping. As it was, he passed away a month after I got home.

The book has always been on an end table in my living room. And, diving into Munroe’s Reading Buechner that I wrote about yesterday, his admonition to listen to your life reminded me of the last two lines of Oliver’s The Summer Day:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

It’s good for me to take a little time out now after being submerged in such a meaningful Faith & Writing Festival at Calvin University to reflect on these words about life from Buechner and Oliver.

I suspect it would be useful for many of us!